


When The Enterprise Had Kittens

by tkp (lettered)



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Humor, Kittens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-30
Updated: 2009-09-30
Packaged: 2017-10-10 01:48:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettered/pseuds/tkp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kittens aboard the <i>Enterprise</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When The Enterprise Had Kittens

**Author's Note:**

> Following in the vein of loving to see the subject of characters getting pets treated seriously, I bring you a fic inspired by [this prompt](http://community.livejournal.com/st_xi_kink/9715.html?thread=29122803#t29122803) on st_xi_kink. I wrote it in about an hour, which is sort of a record for me.

When it became generally known kittens had been beamed aboard the _Enterprise_, Scotty was the first one there. Uhura found him with the dilapidated cardboard box on a hover-dolly behind him, as he muttered under his breath about hairballs in the wiring.

Hearing soft mewling coming from the box, Uhura demanded, "Where are you taking them?"

"Out of my bloody transporter room. What's it look like, adoption?"

"It does now," Uhura said, and put out her hand.

Scotty hesitated, then handed her the dolly remote. "I dinnae want to see them in engineering. Is that clear? And no feline transwarp beaming before I perfect canine and no—_no_—cat hair in the synthesizers."

Uhura opened the box, and pulled out a tiny gray kitty. "It's darling."

Scotty looked at her like she was crazy. "It's a cat."

"It's _darling_," she repeated more firmly to Scotty.

"Alright," Scotty agreed with his _you're still crazy_ smile. "I know better than to come between a lass and her pussy."

Uhura glared. Scotty said innocently, "What?", and Uhura set up a kitten adoption agency. There were six of them, too many for Uhura to take care of all herself, but she took it upon herself to find each of the other five a very good quarters aboard the _Enterprise_.

*

Sulu got a cat.

"Kitten," Uhura corrected, and Sulu said, "Sure, whatever."

Uhura glared. This was a powerful thing she did that everyone recognized and had come to silently fear.

"I already filled out an application," Sulu protested.

"You put you always _wanted_ a cat."

"That might be why I'm here," hint, hint, said Sulu.

"But if you've always wanted a cat, you'd know that these are _kittens_; they need a lot of care; you can't just leave them to their own devices like you would a cat, and--"

Eventually Uhura did give him the cat. Sulu called him, "D'Artagnan".

"Seriously?" said Scotty. "Can't we all have house pets called things like Fido and Fluffy?"

"I like Dumas," said Sulu.

"Dumbass doesn't like me," said Scotty.

D'Artagnan was gray and white, and rather a headache in the beginning. But after a while he could use the self-cleaning, synthetic litter-box, didn't mew every time Sulu left the room, and prowled about while Sulu read and watered the plants and bred catnip. The cat was tiny and arrogant and adventurous and spoiled, and that was the way Sulu liked 'em.

The cat made things less lonely.

*

Sulu knew Chekov hated cats when Chekov said, "Cats? An Egyptian inwention."

"Sure they're not Russian?" Sulu teased.

Chekov frowned. "Why would they be Russian? That is being ridiculous."

"I don't understand how on Earth you wouldn't like something so cute and fluffy, Pavel," Uhura said.

"Why should I like things that are cute and fluffy?" Chekov demanded, confused.

Everyone on the bridge went quiet and looked at him.

"Why should I like things that are cute and fluffy?" Chekov repeated more loudly.

"No reason," Sulu rushed to assure him. "I can see now it's puppies that were invented in Russia."

"Dogs were inwented in Mesopotamia. This is a fact commonly acknowledged." Everyone was still looking at Chekov. Chekov frowned. "Why does eweryone think I like puppies? This is being final: I don't like cats, or turtles, or hamsters. There is no point in house pets."

"What about unicorns?" Jim suggested blandly, but now everyone but him and Chekov were looking at Spock.

Well, Spock wasn't looking at Spock. He actually hadn't looked up from his console the whole time. He was still glued to the science monitor when he spoke up, "Pets serve a social function. Both felines and canines respond instinctively to social structures, allowing humanoids to stand in as surrogate litters or packs. Humanoids respond with their own base instinct to maintain a social hierarchy. While pets do not intellectually stimulate the way a humanoid companion might, by fulfilling need for contact and evolutionary urges for social structure, pets can make humanoids more comfortable and thus better able to function."

Everyone was still looking at Spock.

Spock flipped a switch on his monitor and still did not turn back to them. "Evolutionary and social biology was invented on Vulcan," he told them.

*

Spock did not get a cat.

You might have thought he would, considering what he had said in response to Chekov on the bridge. Kirk thought he would. But Spock didn't. Then Jim found out why. Spock didn't get a cat because he already had Uhura's.

Kirk had woken up early and was in that area of the ship, so he dropped by Spock's quarters to pick up the duty roster for the alpha shift. When Spock said, "Come," to open the doors, Spock was inside, playing with Uhura's cat.

Kirk almost would rather walking in on Spock playing with Uhura. For one thing it would have been really hot, and for another . . . well, Kirk just wanted to be apprised of all fraternization among his command crew.

Having obtained the roster, Kirk proceeded to talk about their current mission and review their planned procedures with Spock. As he talked, Kirk looked about the room. Spock's quarters were both more decorated and more unkempt than Kirk had expected. The few relics Spock had from Vulcan were scattered about. Kirk imagined their was a feminine touch. There was Uhura's book, marked to a page, resting on the nightstand. Her jacket over a chair, her perfume lingering in the air. There were even little kitten food and water bowls in the corner.

Meanwhile Spock made his cool and calculated answers, and wouldn't stop petting the cat. He scratched it under its chin. He ran two long, tapered fingers between its ears, down its back, all the way to the base of its tail. Two of the Elders Spock had saved from the destruction of Vulcan were bonded. They kissed like that. Spock let the cat curl in his lap, between his legs. Spock dangled a string in front of its face, dragged it along the floor for the cat to bat at. Then he went back to petting it, two fingers again, all the way down the back. The cat purred and purred and purred.

Kirk, having long stopped looking around the room, said testily, "I don't see how cat petting is logical."

Spock looked surprised. "It is a proven fact that affection and attention affect an animal's health and well-being. Furthermore it is only logical to establish a connection, considering the social benefits I described earlier on the bridge."

"Just don't let it distract you," said Kirk, who then spun around and left.

*

Kirk did not like cats.

He didn't like dogs much either, and wasn't good with children.

He'd grown up on a farm, which might make you think he'd be good with animals. But they'd had barn cats; those were the kind you let go and do their own thing. You didn't interact with them much unless you made a special effort, which Kirk and certainly the barn cats had never attempted. They'd had some other animals, but all their upkeep was mechanized.

Sam had had a hound dog and it had gotten sick. Mom had had to take it to get it euthanized, and after that she'd said no dogs. They all just die anyway.

Admiral Archer had been a friend of Captain Pike's, and Pike had kept an eye on Kirk through his years at the Academy. Kirk had had dinner at Archer's a couple times and that's how he'd met Archer's dog. Pike had told him at one point Archer would like him if the beagle liked him, and for some reason Pike had thought that was encouragement or something.

Later Kirk found out Pike thought Kirk was a dog person because he thought Kirk was a leader, he inspired loyalty, he was confident and generous and brave. It was all very complimentary, except Kirk just couldn't bring himself to socialize with what seemed to him such a fragile, dependent thing. He couldn't stand the way animals looked at you, as if you were there whole world.

Kirk thought the Other Kirk that Other Spock had shown him probably loved dogs, and cats, and children.

But this Kirk just watched Spock's elegant hands stroking the goddamn cat until he couldn't stand it any more, and stopped visiting Spock in his quarters.

*

No one expected McCoy to find the tiny helpless kittens adorable, so no one was surprised when he didn't, the way they had been with Chekov. But it was Chekov who got down to the truth of the matter.

Sulu had been going on about some plant of his releasing noxious fumes and how he was worried about D'Artagnan. Chekov had been thinking that maybe if Sulu didn't have to take care of this and fondle that and pay more attention to all his little projects than anything else, he wouldn't have to worry about them killing each other, but whatewer. Chekov had finally just said he'd take the damn cat until the fumes diffused.

"But you don't like cats," said Sulu.

"It's not like I would be killing it," said Chekov.

"I think I've killed it!" Chekov said, twelve hours later. He was rushing into the med bay, clutching D'Artagnan. McCoy had just gotten there in response to Chekov's emergency page.

If Chekov had been thinking straight he would've thought McCoy would say, "Dammit boy, you wrested me out of bed at one in the morning for a goddamn cat?" But instead McCoy took the kitten and proceeded to perform an emergency operation that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.

At one point, he threw Chekov out of the room, since Chekov wouldn't shut up about how Hikaru loved the goddamn cat more than anything. "Oughtta have you checked for blindness," Bones grunted, and told Chekov he wasn't allowed in the med bay any more. At another point he called in Nurse Chapel because the operation wasn't going well. She didn't ask why he'd called her in at four in the morning for a goddamn cat, either. Instead she handed McCoy his tools and monitored the kitten's vitals.

"I just don't get this obsession with cats," Kirk told McCoy, when he heard about it.

"Breed incessantly," McCoy agreed. "And I never did like pointy ears."

Kirk was silent for a while. "I think Spock and Uhura are living together," he said finally.

"Jim," said Bones, but that was all he did, because he couldn't operate or medicate or pet him, because Jim wasn't like a pet, which would always love you back the way you wanted if you loved him enough.

*

No one quite knew how the cats started showing up in engineering.

At first it was just one, now and then, seen out of the corner of an eye and then missed. Then there were a couple more that would appear that way. Then there were six that had moved in, set up shop, and lived there permanently.

They weren't Uhura's cats. She'd found a good home for each and every one of the original six. No, these were new cats, other cats—though it was observed that if any of the pet cats, even Uhura's cat Najma, managed to escape their owner's quarters, they somehow found their way to engineering.

"Like a sort of cat Mecca," Chekov said.

"Like Rome was in the twentieth century," said Sulu.

Sometimes people claimed they heard Scotty talking to the cats.

"Maybe he understands them," Kirk said, and shrugged.

"Cats don't have a language," insisted Uhura, who never liked the fact that she had been unable to learn Keenser's language, despite the fact Scotty appeared to understand him with ease. "Their vocalizations are more like cues, similar to body language." It was possible she was also peeved that Najma thought engineering was Cat Mecca, too.

There were different theories about how the cats got there. Some said one of Uhura's original six had escaped its owner long enough to have kittens, and that's where the new cats came from. Some said it was a space anomaly spontaneously causing cats to appear in various parts of the quadrant. Some said that the _Enterprise_ had had two boxes of kittens all along, and that Scotty just hadn't shared one.

When anyone asked Scott, all he said was, "I dinnae know. They always just—you! Yeah, you! Git down from there!—they just show up. Follow me around. Act like they own the place—I said git!"

Now that they were here, though, he would never leave them behind.


End file.
